Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays

by Alastair Hannay

  22 Papirer X 2 A 592 (482).

  23 They need his dialectic to be consolidated, if faith is what they want, but 'the most intelligent person is hindered from believing by his great understanding'. On the other hand: 'he also has the advantage of knowing from experience what it is to believe against the understanding' (SKS 7, p. 515 [502] ). As to what that advantage is, a comment in the journals may help. It says that 'to be properly clear that the object of faith is the absurd abbreviates tremendously'. That might just mean that once you see the point you don't have to go on and on, not about the elaborate dialectic, but about faith. That remark, too, seems aimed at the 'intelligent', but in the same entry Kierkegaard surmises that God may have made the object of faith absurd out of concern for people – ordinary people, that is to say, people of ordinary intelligence and not versed in dialectics (Papirer X 2 A 624 [490] [1850] ). God has even 'let it be said in advance that it was, is, and must be absurd'.

  24 Papirer X 1 A 680 (420) (1849).

  25 Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, trans. by T. K. Abbott, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1946, p. 13.

  26 My thanks to an anonymous referee.

  27 Recall that for Allison, Postscript, owing to the patent inadequacy of its argument, must be considered a comic device; the 'doctrinal content of the work must be regarded as an ironical jest, which essentially takes the form of a carefully constructed parody of the Phenomenology of Mind' (p. 290).

  28 SKS 7, p. 465 (459).

  29 Ibid., p. 455 (448).

  30 Ibid., p. 408 (401).

  31 Ibid., p. 465 (459).

  32 Ibid.

  33 Ibid., p. 472 (463–4).

  34 Ibid., p. 474 (465). Translation altered.

  35 Ibid., pp. 466, 467–9 (459, 462–4).

  36 Ibid., pp. 561–2 (546–7). Postscript's remarks about revocation and superfluousness are addressed to an 'imagined' reader. Climacus, saying he does not aim to 'oblige any single real person to be the reader', feels free to have an ideal one. The ideal, imagined reader is one who both reads the book and, once apprised of the real comedy as opposed to the humorous rhetoric, would know to put it aside. The ideal reader 'can hold out as long as the author; he can understand that understanding is a revocation' (ibid., p. 563 [548] ).

  37 Kierkegaard at least wanted us to believe that the function of his 'dialectical' pseudonyms (de Silentio, Haufniensis, Climacus, Anti-Climacus) was to bring people back to Christianity, not put them off it – in spite of the talk of the repulsion of the absurd, or rather to bring them back to it precisely by that somewhat drastic means.

  38 SKS 7, p. 506 (494).

  39 Ibid., p. 78 (71–2); cf. p. 84 (78).

  40 SKS 17, 2002, Journal DD 3, 6.

  41 Papirer X, 2 A 130 (436) (1849). In his very first publication, From the Papers of One Still Living, through Either/Or (see the title of Assessor Wilhelm's second long letter in Part Two), to many comments in the journals. The idea itself is implicit in Postscript's thought that one must exist in one's thinking. In his journals Kierkegaard comments on a book on the topic by the younger Fichte (I. H. Fichte, Die Idee der Persönlichkeit und der individuellen Fortdauer, Elberfeld, 1834, see Papirer II, A 31 [1837] ), and again, later, on the curious usage that makes a 'personal' remark an impertinent one and the term 'personality' itself just another word for an insult. He thinks this strange when 'the personal is the secret of all human existence' (Papirer X, 1 A 18 [1849] ).

  42 Of the latter he writes: 'The whole Idealist development e.g. in Fichte certainly found an "I", an immortality, but without fullness [Fylde] … Fichte threw the empirical ballast overboard in despair and capsized.' Papirer I, A 302 (59) (1836). But what Novalis hauled on-board again were only the 'opiate fumes of soul-fullness

  43 Touse John Perry's experession [Sjelsfylde]'.Papirer I, A 91 (39) (1835).

  2 Philosophy of mind

  1 Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylania Press, 1971.

  2 Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard's Thought, ed. and trans. by Howard Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.

  3 John W. Elrod, Being and Existence in Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Works, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Mark C. Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time and the Self, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.

  4 Mackey, Kierkegaard, p. 268.

  5 Charles. Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 225.

  6 Peter F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, London: Methuen, 1967, Part One.

  7 Mark. C. Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship.

  8 Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS), ed. by N. J. Cappelørn, J. Garff, J. Kondrup, A. McKinnon and F. H. Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag for the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, 1997–, SKS 4, 1997, pp. 272–84. Johannes Climacus, ed. S. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments. Present author's translation.

  9 Jean Wahl, Études Kierkegaardiennes, Paris: Fernand Aubier, 1938, see, for example, p. 166.

  10 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller, analysis and foreword by J. N. Findlay. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977 (pbk 1979), §§ 213 and 210.

  11 Ibid., §§ 210 (emphases added) and 232, and G. W. F. Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, trans. by W. Cerf and H. S. Harris, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1977, p. 318.

  12 SKS 7, 2002, p. 280. My translation. The Swenson/Lowrie translation (references added henceforth in parentheses) (Johannes Climacus, ed. S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941) renders 'at toenke' (lit. 'to think' here 'thought') as 'philosophical reflection' p. 273.

  13 SKS 4, p. 306 (Climacus, ed. Kierkegaard, Fragments).

  14 SKS 7, pp. 137–8 (184–5).

  15 See Mark C. Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship and especially Adi Shmuëli, Kierkegaard and Consciousness, trans. by Naomi Handelman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.

  16 SKS 7, p. 519 (507).

  17 SKS 4, p. 353 (Vigilius Haufniensis, Begrebet Angest). The Concept of Anxiety, trans. by Reidar Thomte (Kierkegaard's Writings, VIII), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 49 (references in parentheses). Present author's translation.

  18 Samlede Værker, ed. by A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange, 5th rev. edn of 3rd edn, 20 vols, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962 (SV3), vol. 15, p. 73 (Anti-Climacus, ed. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til døden). The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, p. 43.

  19 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. by J. Sibree, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990, p. 17.

  20 SKS 4, pp. 347, 348 – cf. p. 401–354, 376, 384, 390–1 (41, 42 – cf. 98–48–9, 72, 81, 87–8).

  21 SKS 7, pp. 519-20 (507).

  22 SKS 4, p. 359 (44).

  23 G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (System der Philosophie, Sämtliche Werke, vols VIII, IX and X, 1927–30), § 413).

  24 Hegel, Phenomenology, § 77.

  25 Cf. SKS 4, p. 359 (44).

  26 Ibid., p. 383 (80).

  27 Ibid.

  28 SKS 7, p. 363 (357).

  29 Ibid., pp. 356–7 (350–1).

  30 Ibid., p. 370 (364–5).

  31 Ibid., p. 356 (350) (emphasis added).

  32 Ibid., p. 364 (358).

  33 Ibid., p. 369 (363).

  34 Ibid., p. 373 (367).

  35 See SV3 15, p. 113. The Sickness unto Death, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, p. 88 (references henceforth in parentheses).

  36 SKS 7, p. 373 (367).

  37 Ibid., pp 385 and 390–1 (379 and 384).

  38 Ibid., p. 388 (381).

  39 Ibid., p. 388 (382).

  40 SV3 15, p. 112 (88, 112–13).

  41 Ibid., p. 74 (44).

  42 SKS 7, pp 381–2
(376); cf. SV3 15, p. 88 (p. 60).

  43 SV3 15, p. 75 (45–6).

  44 Ibid., p. 73 (43).

  45 SV3 14, p. 74 (44).

  46 Ibid., p. 87 (59).

  47 Ibid., p. 88 (60).

  48 SKS 4, p. 437 (136).

  49 SKS 7, p. 385 (379).

  50 SKS 4, p. 437 (136).

  51 For example, Donald Davidson, 'How is Weakness of the Will Possible?', in Davidson, Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, 'Belief and Self-deception', Inquiry, 15, 1972, and 'Akrasia and Conflict', Inquiry, 23, 1980. See both the latter for further references.

  52 This point is made in Kresten Nordentoft's Kierkegaard's Psychology (trans. by Bruce Kirmmse, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), the only major work in the period under review devoted to these aspects of Kierkegaard's thought and their relation to post-Freudian psychology.

  53 L. A. Feuerbach, Ludwig Feuerbachs Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Wilhelm Bolin and Friedrich Jodls, 10 vols, Stuttgart, 1903–10, vol. 2, pp. 230 and 232.

  54 SKS 7, p. 147 (141).

  55 SKS 4, pp. 172–3 and 171. Fear and Trembling, trans. by Alastair Hannay, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, pp. 110–11 and 107 (references henceforth in parentheses).

  56 Ibid., p. 201 (137).

  57 Ibid., for example p. 84 (149).

  58 Hegel, Phenomenology, § 96.

  59 SKS 4, pp. 153 and 201 (89 and.137).

  60 SKS 7, p. 185 (181).

  61 R.J. Bernstein, Praxis andAetun: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.

  62 See SKS 4, p. 148 (82).

  63 See Paul Dietrichson, 'An Introduction to a Reappraisal of Fear and Trembling', Inquiry, 12, 1969.

  64 See Mark C. Taylor, Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship, especially the two last chapters.

  65 See ibid., pp. 337 ff. and the qualifying footnote on p. 337.

  66 See Stuart Hampshire, 'Feeling and Expression', in Jonathan Glover (ed.), The Philosophy of Mind, London: Routledge, 1976, especially pp. 81ff.

  67 John R. Searle, 'What is an Intentional State'?, Mind, 88, 1979; and 'The Intentionality of Intention and Action', Inquiry, 22, 1979.

  68 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. by P. Winch, Oxford: Blackwell, 1980; rev. edn (text revised by Alois Pichler), 1998, p. 52e (original emphasis). see ch.13 in this volume, p 180

  69 Ibid. (emphasis added).

  70 Hampshire, 'Feeling and Expression', p. 81.

  71 Stanley Cavell, 'Kierkegaard's On Authority and Revelation', in Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, New York: Scribner's, 1976.

  72 Hampshire, 'Feeling and Expression', p. 82.

  73 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, pp. 52e and 52 (original emphasis).

  74 Hampshire, 'Feeling and Expression', p. 82.

  75 See, for example, Robert C. Roberts, 'Kierkegaard on Becoming an "Individual"', Scottish Journal of Theology, 31, 1978; and 'Thinking Subjectively,' International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 11, 1980.

  3 Faith and probability

  1 Robert Merrihew Adams, 'Kierkegaard's Arguments against Objective Reasoning in Religion' (The Monist, 60, 1977, pp. 48–62), reprinted in N. Scott Arnold, Theodore M. Benditt and George Graham (eds), Philosophy Then and Now, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 211–25. Here p. 214.

  2 Ibid., p. 212.

  3 See Peter Fonda, Don't Tell Dad, New York: Hyperion, 1998, p. 496. Of course, it can be said that the desire in this case inclines the would-be believer to regard the paucity of evidence in favour of the belief as due to the parent's inability to make visible what would otherwise have been overpowering evidence for it. The rationality of that move would depend on further evidence about the parent's psychological make-up.

  4 Adams, 'Kierkegaard's Arguments', p. 214. A small ambiguity is removed by exchanging prepositions, the danger 'in' rather than 'of'.

  5 Ibid., pp. 214–15.

  6 Ibid., p. 213. Adams's references are to the Swenson/Lowrie translation of Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), here p. 25 (emphasis removed). I give them here in parentheses following references to the corresponding passages in Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS), ed. by N. J. Cappelørn, J. Garff, J. Kondrup, A. McKinnon and F. H. Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag for the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, 1997–, SKS 7, 2002, here p. 30. I do not keep rigidly to the translation.

  7 Adams, 'Kierkegaard's Arguments', p. 214 (original emphasis).

  8 SKS 7, p. 29 (23).

  9 Ibid., p. 38 (32).

  10 See SKS, Kommentarbind 6, 1999, p. 351.

  11 Adams, 'Kierkegaard's Arguments', p. 215.

  12 SKS 7, p. 336 (331).

  4 Having Lessing on one's side

  1 Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter (SKS), ed. by N. J. Cappelørn, J. Garff, J. Kondrup, A. McKinnon and F. H. Mortensen, Copenhagen: Gads Forlag for the Søren Kierkegaard

  Research Centre, 1997–, SKS 7, 2002, p. 72. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941, p. 72. References to the translation are given in parentheses. Except for some brief phrases, translations of Concluding Unscientific Postscript are all modified.

  2 SKS 7, p. 69 (67–8).

  3 Ibid., pp. 66–7 (64–5).

  4 'Eine Duplik', G. E. Lessings gesammelte Werke (hereafter GW) (neue rechtmässige Ausgabe), Leipzig: G. J. Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung, 1857, 9, p. 98.

  5 What could Kierkegaard make of a thinker who at one time or another held (i) that individuals can get a head-start at birth by bringing their spiritual gains with them from a previous existence (and generation), (ii) that freedom was not such a good idea because it induced anxiety (Philosophische Aufsätze, 1776) – Lessing thanked his God that he was 'under necessity, that the best must be' – and who ended up believing (iii) that the resort to religion was in any case a sign of human immaturity (Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts [1780], GW, 9, pp. 399–425). But in mitigation and in the context of the fourth thesis attributable to Lessing, it would be perfectly in order to doubt that Lessing considered any of these to be 'results'.

  6 SKS 7, p. 103 (106).

  7 Søren Kierkegaards Papirer (Papirer), ed. by P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr and E. Torsting, 16 vols in 25 tomes, 2nd edn, ed. by N. Thulstrup, with an Index by N. J. Cappelørn, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968–78, V B 1.3 and V B 1.2. Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, 7 vols, ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, vol. 3, 1975, pp. 2342, 2370, trans. altered. For Lessing's use of the word Sprung, see GW, 9, pp. 84–5.